‘Two of a kind’

Philippine Daily Inquirer Magazine, 12 May 1999

This is the intro to an interview set casting light on the recent
press muzzling brouhaha in Manila. See web address above for full
(lengthy) text of interviews (mostly in English) & color
photos.

ON THE face of it, they are two women with similar backgrounds making
strikingly different choices in the name of one cause—press
freedom.

One-time president of the UP student council and editor-in-chief of
The Philippine Collegian, Malou Mangahas spent three and a half months
in Bicutan (prison) for printing stories critical of the Marcoses. A
strongly principled woman, Mangahas figured prominently in two
newspaper walkouts in the late '80s, over issues of crony
ownership and a less-than-independent stance towards news sources. Her
frustration with mainstream media found expression in the Philippine
Center for Investigative Journalism, which she founded with six other
journalists in 1989. Shortly after, Mangahas married fellow activist
Roel Landingin, current business editor of The Manila Times, with whom
she has a nine-year-old daughter. She became the Times'
editor-in-chief in 1994.

When all hell broke loose in the The Times newsroom last month on
account of President Estrada's P101-million libel suit and the
subsequent front-page apology from The Times president Robina
Gokongwei-Pe, Mangahas was away at Harvard enjoying the second half of
her nine-month Nieman fellowship.

She had been in close touch with her staff via e-mail, creating a pile
of print-outs at least two inches thick while debating the
options left to them as their paper faced severely strained relations
with the highest office in the land.

No stranger to controversy herself, The Times managing editor Chit
Estella was the woman in charge in Mangahas' absence. The former
president of the UP Journalism Club started writing for the human
rights magazine of the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA)
shortly after graduation, before moving on to the Manila Evening Post,
Tempo and Malaya as a reporter. She joined the Inquirer desk in 1994,
and became The Times managing editor under Mangahas in 1995.

Backed by an equally young and idealistic staff, the Mangahas-Estella
partnership flourished until it was sorely tried by the paper's
apology published on April 8.

While Estella resigned along with associate editor Booma Cruz, chief
of reporters for national news Ed Lingao and chief of reporters for
business news Joel Gaborni, Mangahas and news editor Glenda Gloria
opted to stay. It was a decision that came at the cost of
friendships and professional relationships dearest and most important
to us, Mangahas admitted.

Outside the The Times, the apology was seen as a blow to freedom of
the press under the Estrada administration and, unfortunately for the
men and women who worked so hard to win readers' respect, as a
major blow to the credibility of the paper itself.

In separate interviews with the SIM staff, Mangahas spells out why she
is staying while Estella explains why she had to go. Theirs is a
story which raises important issues for the ordinary Filipino. The
Times case not only casts doubt on the principle of press freedom in a
democracy but raises questions about the limits of press freedom in
the Philippine context, where media is both a public trust and a
private enterprise.